THE ASSAULTED CRICKET. 419 



master " respecting the young lady and young gentleman, I 

 must take leave to observe that ' youth is apt at learning/ and 

 that ahem ! ' to instil false notions is not good. ' Fairies are 

 fabulous/ and so, in my opinion, are spirits too, I always set 

 iny face against them, always did ; and as to crickets and 

 kitchen beetles, those mean hinsects, of, I should say, the genus 

 Hachetidy and Blatty, to talk of their being fairies or spirits, 

 why" 



Here the fire-side chirper, who for the last half-hour had 

 been perfectly mute, burst forth with such shrilly loudness as 

 nearly to overpower the low husky voice of the prosaic setter- 

 down of Dolly's superstitions. Caleb gave a violent kick with 

 his great splay foot against the side of the fire-place, over the 

 very spot whence the insect's voice proceeded. Down fell some 

 flakes of plaster, and away, over the heated hearth, towards its 

 opposite side, scampered the assailed cricket. But his move- 

 ments were not half fleet enough for the ruthless Caleb, who, 

 deaf to our interceding exclamations, and regardless even of 

 falling embers, seized the hapless runaway by one of his long 

 leaping legs just as he had made good his retreat into a snug 

 cranny between the bricks. 



Thus hard pressed and hard pulled, the cricket abandoned 

 his leg, and leaving it, a trophy, in the hand of his persecutor, 

 disappeared within his hard-won place of refuge. Lucy burst 

 into tears ; I, to see her, doubled my fist, and actually dealt our 

 writing-master a sound blow ; and as to Dolly, no words, no 

 pencil can depict the change that came over her. She neither 

 shed a tear nor would she have struck a blow, hardly felt, 

 perhaps, either sorrow or anger, all else swallowed up in a 

 sudden shuddering presentiment, fearfully anticipative of some 

 coming calamity connected mysteriously with the violence just 

 done to the cricket, the last cricket of her hearth, the last good 

 genius of our home. 



Well, Mr. Caligraph was certainly sorry or compunctious 



